New announcements for DS as Reggie speaks at D.I.C.E.

10 February 2006

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Posted by:Josh

Nintendo’s executive vice president of Nintendo of America, Reggie Fils-Aime, arguably the most intimidating corporate video game exec. of the console big-three, spoke at the D.I.C.E. Summit (which stands for Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) about Nintendo’s way of doing things. Which you can read about yourself here.

However the most important info to come out of the speech involve some very nice additions to the Nintendo DS. First off, Reggie announced that voice chat (YES!) will no be possible in Nintendo’s upcoming DS title, Metroid Prime Hunters. The catch is that you can’t use voice chat during the game, only in lobbies pre and post game. Which is fine by me, “smacktalking” is totally annoying IMO. Reggie also let it be known that DS owners will be able to wirelessly download extras: trailers, game demos, and other files to their DS’ directly from certain hotspots here in the States.

Nintendo has commitments with retailers EB Games, GameStop, and Game Crazy to host download stations, and negotiations are under way with megaretailers Target and Wal-Mart. Nintendo envisions DS download stations at thousands of retail locations across the country, and has already announced that the first download stations will include demos of Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, Mario Kart DS, True Swing Golf, Pokemon Trozei, Meteos, and Tetris DS. A video of Metroid Prime: Hunters will also be available for download, with new content is expected to be added every quarter.

Says Reggie, “We plan on expanding the market for interactive entertainment…for those who already buy our games and for those who don’t buy our games.”

Unfortuneatly, whatever you download will only stay on your DS as long as it is powered on. Once you shut it off, the downloads will be lost.

I commend Nintendo for even taking a step like this, which is needed if their Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection is going to even think of competing on the same level as Xbox Live or Sony’s service. It’s unfortuneate though that Nintendo has to keep limited gamers so much. I wonder, for example, if game updates, such as new enemies or weapons in Metroid Prime Hunters, would even be possible using this new downloading method. I think Nintendo should release some kind of small memory card or something for the DS for this kind of thing, where you could save what you download onto the card, either that or have the Play-yan include some onboard memory for saves.

Either way, this is a step in the right direction.